This invention relates to label printing and applying apparatus and more specifically to such apparatus which is in the form of a hand-held, hand-operated gun.
In retail stores, it is a common merchandising practice to place certain labels on items to highlight special promotions or special features of a product. These special labels may inform a customer that the item is on sale, is a special item, or is of a particular grade or class. One of the more common uses of these special labels is on packages of meat in a self-service meat counter of a supermarket. Typically, these special meat package labels may carry a copy saying "FRESH," "BARBECUE," "SPECIAL," "SALE," or whatever is desired.
These special labels have been heretofore preprinted on rolls of adhesive-backed labels by commercial label printers. The rolls of preprinted labels are then sold to a store and store personnel hand-apply the labels to the desired packages without the aid of any dispensing or applying device. As a result applying these labels in this way is difficult and time consuming. Also, preprinted labels usually may be purchased only in large quantities and typically extra charges are made for printing labels with a special message or which identify a particular store.
Reference may be made to such U.S. patents as U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,420,172, 3,782,279, and 3,957,562, which disclose various price-label printing and applying guns generally similar to the apparatus of this invention. These prior labeling guns, however, had a printing head which utilized a series of endless adjustable printing bands so that the price to be printed on the blank labels could readily be changed. While these adjustable printing band-type labeling guns may be sized to print special indicia labels, their printing heads would be much too large if the printing bands were made large enough to print large indicia for the desired special labels.
Reference is also made to such U.S. patents as U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,994,266, 3,307,479, 3,714,894, and 3,857,224, which disclose various prior art printing apparatus believed relevant to the apparatus of the present invention.